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Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is bringing its Healthcare Enabled Services to five additional data centers as a way to help the healthcare industry meet the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements for safeguarding electronic protected health information.

Besides Miami and Culpeper, Va., healthcare organizations will be able to now securely store their ePHI in Verizon's data centers located in Richardson, Texas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Englewood, Colo.; Carteret, N.J.; and Elmsford, N.Y.

A key focus of the expanded product set is about enabling hospitals and other healthcare organizations to control costs and freeing up resources so they can focus on their core mission of serving patients.

"For many healthcare organizations, storing and managing ePHI on their own can be cost-prohibitive," said Rich Black, global vice president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions Healthcare Practice, in a blog post. "Verizon's Healthcare Enabled Services allow healthcare organizations to focus on their core competency--delivering care to patients--while letting Verizon focus on providing an end-to-end infrastructure management solution that securely delivers enterprise-class connectivity, availability and reliability."

Expanding its focus on the lucrative healthcare segment makes sense as Verizon tries to ramp up its strategic business revenues like cloud, which rose 1.8 percent to $2.1 billion during the first quarter.